Le 15 Café

Pooja Dhingra is the city's favourite pastry chef. She has single handedly managed to make an entire city fall in love with an almost forgotten Parisian delight. After making her loyal customers macaroon mad, she opened her own culinary studio where one could go and learn various cooking and baking tips and tricks. As a roaring pastry business, a bestselling cook book and a culinary studio was not enough, she recently managed to launch her very own little Parisian inspired café and if you ask us, this is the best yet. 

While the café is entirely Pooja's baby, the chef that has helped her pull it all together and the one in charge is Chef Pablo Naranjo Agular from Colombia. He first met Pooja nearly 8 years ago at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and is now in charge of the café and the menu.

Le 15 Café is a small cosy yet beautiful little café tucked away in the by lanes of Colaba, opposite the street that houses the popular Bademiyan restaurant. The café has a few tables and chairs, pretty pictures on the wall, tiled flooring and a huge display counter decorated with every imaginable dessert. There is soft French music playing in the background and if you manage to snag a table post lunch and just before the evening rush hits, it feels like you are in a little café somewhere in Europe. 

The menu is concise with a few salads (red and green with strawberries and lettuce with candied walnuts and chocolate is our favourite ), sandwiches ( the croque madame is a winner ), main dishes ( the stuffed gnocchi and burrata are the top picks ) and, even a small breakfast menu of waffles and eggs. There are plenty of choices for tea and coffee, but the hero on the menu is the dessert. 

Barely two months old, this has already become a trendy café that is buzzing with people almost any time of day. Thankfully, it is not one of those menus that reads like a clone of another and has stuck to its European/Parisian theme. If you are looking for something different, then Le 15 Café should do the trick!